My beautiful, bowlegged, jade-eyed tabby was lounging on the patio when a sparrow, swooping down from the blue, thumped against the screen door. And there it thrashed, its claws caught in the mesh. How swiftly all of this happened from where I sat on the living room couch reading about the war-- the cat darted, leapt, his outstretched body rising and rising until the sparrow fluttered in his jaws. No time to think-- the newspaper skated across the wooden floor, the door screeched along its track, my hands clamped around the cat's throat and squeezed, blood shuttling quicker through my veins. Drop it , I commanded, and he obeyed. And I let go. And the sparrow scuttled on the concrete before ruffling a line in the lawn, then sailed over the trellis mobbed with lavender flowers, over a rooftop, the black arrow of its shadow sliding across the shingles. The world slowed then, the blood cooled. Far off, wind jostled wind chimes-- the sound of a broom endlessly sweeping broken glass.
On Aggression.
Hernandez, David (American writer)
My beautiful, bowlegged, jade-eyed tabby was lounging on the patio when a sparrow, swooping down from the blue, thumped against the screen door. And there it thrashed, its claws caught in the mesh. How swiftly all of this happened from where I sat on the living room couch reading about the war-- the cat darted, leapt, his outstretched body rising and rising until the sparrow fluttered in his jaws. No time to think-- the newspaper skated across the wooden floor, the door screeched along its track, my hands clamped around the cat's throat and squeezed, blood shuttling quicker through my veins. Drop it , I commanded, and he obeyed. And I let go. And the sparrow scuttled on the concrete before ruffling a line in the lawn, then sailed over the trellis mobbed with lavender flowers, over a rooftop, the black arrow of its shadow sliding across the shingles. The world slowed then, the blood cooled. Far off, wind jostled wind chimes-- the sound of a broom endlessly sweeping broken glass.